Re: Room correction (Was Progress?)

On Tue, Jun 06, 2006 at 04:58:51PM +0100, Daniel James wrote:
> >I still have an old 12-channel
> >Seck lying around, and last time I tried it I noticed it was noisy as
> >hell compared with a more modern desk.
> 
> Maybe it needs a service :-) I've been able to do some very quiet 
> recordings on mine, although the monitor channels can be noisy. I would 
> like a Neve desk but I don't think it's going to happen any time soon.

I was comparing it with a recent Soundcraft, which has quieter op amps.
The owner of the Soundcraft asked me to check it because when he plugged
it into his 20kW PA in his store-room and stood two feet away from the
speakers he thought it gave a lot of hiss. I compared it with the Seck
and found that the Soundcraft was noticeably quieter.

> >My current preferred way of mixing is to use an analog desk with
> >outboard FX and compression, and mix back to a stereo track
> >in Ardour.
> 
> That's great if you've got the outboard gear, but a lot of people don't 
> have access to that these days.

Well, usable gear is pretty cheap these days. I use a lot of Behringer
stuff - there's no point being an equipment snob if it does the job to
a reasonable standard.

> Is there any particular desk you favour? 
> I know Ron still has his Soundtracs analogue desk from the 80's, and as 
> we know the 80's are back in fashion :-)

In my personal setup at home I have a 16:8:2 Studiomaster desk (cue
laughter) which I was given for wiring up some control room multi-cores
in a local commercial studio (they paid me too :). As any desk affordable
by mere mortals has unbalanced direct outs, I use three 8-channel mic preamps,
SM Pro Audio PR8E's, which are amazingly cheap at 150 Euros/Dollars each,
but sound good, especially since I changed all the 4558 op amps for 5532s
(lower noise and higher slew rate), and these are fully balanced.
My interface is a rack of three M-Audio Delta 1010's, again modified with
better power supply regulation, a home made power supply (I used to
design and build industrial control equipment BTW) in the back of the
rack and cooling fans for each 1010.
Everything is cased for transport including the dual Opteron server
I run the software on.
The desk is the performance bottleneck at the moment. I'm planning on
getting something like a DDA D-series, which I've worked with in the
past. They have good sounding EQ and better build quality than most
current desks - individual channel modules etc. You can pick these up
for about £2000 these days. It'll have to wait until funds are available
though.
I've been told by other engineers I know that the best EQ they've heard
is on some of the Amek desks, eg. the Angela, but you'd be
lucky to find one at less than £6000. They were designed by Neve,
but they're half the price because of the less fashionable name.

John